views considered Herzen too vague, and found his policy unduly conservative. The first proclamation issued by Young Russia reproaches Herzen for misunderstanding the situation and for conservatism. At this epoch, too, political endeavours were in the ascendant in Russia, where the leaders of the movement resided; publicist and political interests were concentrated in Russia; the powerful influence exercised by Černyševskii during the early sixties, if not the direct cause of the coolness felt towardsHerzen, at least paved the way for its onset.
The reaction and repression which began in 1863, led to an increase in radicalism, and sent a new stream of refugees to Europe, refugees already unfriendly to Herzen. His removal from London to Geneva, the new refugee centre, availed nothing; an understanding was impossible. Not merely did Herzen remain estranged from the younger revolutionaries, but he was never able to harmonise his outlook with that of Černyševskii, though the two writers built on the same philosophical foundations.
Herzen knew and admitted that he had changed, but he had changed, he said, because the entire situation had altered. Modification of views is natural to a vigorously aspiring man, but the important question is, in what direction the modification occurs and by what it is determined. Much as I admire Herzen as author and as man, my liking for him has its reserves. His change of views disturbs me, though not for quite the same reasons that made his friends uneasy.
It was not in early youth, but in the maturity of manhood that Herzen declared himself a disciple of the Byronic Cain, and it therefore seems to me that his subsequent change was hardly natural—unless we explain the anathema uttered in 1850 as the expletive of a young man in a hurry. But the remove from Byron to N. Turgenev is a very great one, and between the two writers there is a chasm hardly to be spanned! It was natural that N. Turgenev should exercise an attraction on Herzen, for Turgenev had thought out his constitutionalist plans with some care, and the decabrist tradition was likewise on his side.
For the very reason that Herzen appeals to us because of his many brilliant qualities we must endeavour to come to an understanding about his defects.
In philosophical matters Herzen's inadequacy was due to this, that he failed to criticise and recriticise the foundations
